The DC Comics direct to DVD animated spectaculars continue with the origin of Green Lantern. "Wait!" you say, "Didn't we just see the origin of Green Lantern two movies ago in 'Justice League:The New Frontier'"? Well, yes we did. And no we didn't....

(I'm going to try to make this as 'Spoiler Light' as possible, so I'm going to gloss a bit over the traditional Republibot Play by Play)

There are still spoilers, but I try to keep the particulars obscured...

"There Will Come Soft Rains" is a short story by Ray Bradbury, first published in 1950 as a standalone, and later compiled into "The Martian Chronicles" as a kind of "Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch" story that's kind of achingly plaintive and sad.

I can *not* say enough good things about this movie, I just loved the hell out of it.

This is two thirds of a really good movie, which makes it especially frustrating when it all falls apart at the end. The film is set solidly in the 1950s, beginning the day (7/27/1953) and ends with a badly-animated president Kennedy giving a speech in July of ’61. The premise is that superheroes have gone out of fashion in the days since WW2, with most having retired. Those who remain are strongly questioning why they do it, since the lines between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ have gotten spectacularly muddy. (Huh?

I don’t actually know any more about this than any of the rest of you do, possibly less as I’ve been deliberately ducking spoilers, but here’s my *theory* about The Venture Brothers: I think The Monarch and Rusty are brothers. They’re the same age, they’re both utter jackasses, they’re both skinny as hell and both have very red hair. We’ve also seen that Rusty’s dad, Jonas, got around and sired at least one illegitimate offspring, and that The Monarch was essentially an orphan-with-a-trust-fund. Who set up the trust?

Ben 10: Alien Force is the second TV show in the “Ben Ten” franchise. The original series ran for five production cycles, or about 3 years, and “Alien Force” is set five years later. Whereas the original show was an open-ended series of more-or-less standalone adventures, this one was conceived of as a two-season arc series. It ended tonight.